July 4, 1519—In the television age, everyone at home acts as a judge during the quadrennial American Presidential debates. But these contests, even since the fabled Nixon-Kennedy faceoffs, have invariably been marked by trivia and an obsession with appearance.
Such was not the case with the theological thrust-and-parry that began on this date in Leipzig, Germany, between Catholic theologian Johann Eck and his opponent, a monk whose arguments with the Church had grown more pointed over the last couple of years: Martin Luther.
The quest for American freedom neither began nor ended with July 4, 1776. In my post later today, I’ll take up the issue of how the banner of liberty was raised well after the Declaration of Independence, in an era of complacency.
For now, though, I thought it would be useful to examine an event that is not only little remembered among chroniclers of American freedom, but that does not even receive as much attention as it should where you think it might: in histories of Europe.
The Folly of Teaching European History
Everybody knows that the teaching of American history at the elementary and high school level is ridiculous. To cover two centuries (even more, if you count from the Columbia encounter with the New World) in two years was silly when I was going to school more than 30 years ago—the more contemporary period inevitably got short shrift. It’s even worse now with an added generation and a half to account for.
Okay, now imagine European history. Only Mel Brooks or Monty Python could cover the high (or make that low) points of nearly a millennium of events. Even chopping it up in smaller periods—say, the Renaissance and Reformation—only gets you so far.
That’s what I found out in reviewing my college notes, from a class I took at Columbia University, on this period. (I’m far from knocking the course, by the way: it remains one of the most fondly recalled that I had in college.)
But for all the talk in class about the causes and consequences of the Reformation, even of the biases involved with the term (coined, of course, by Protestants, and grumbled at by Catholics for years), I found no mention in the notes of this landmark event in Luther’s movement away from the Church.
Point of No Return
Until this point, despite nailing his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg (it probably didn’t happen quite this way, but that’s a story for another time), Luther had been careful mostly to confine himself to abuses loudly denounced even by mainstream defenders of Catholicism. As he defended himself against Eck, however, Luther was forced to depart ever more seriously, on a wider range of substantive issues, than before.
In other words, this was Luther’s point of no return, after which he and the Church were doomed irretrievably for conflict.
Although Eck began speaking against an opponent on June 27, it wasn’t against Luther himself at first but against his friend Andreas Karlstadt. For a week, Eck—who had started out as a somewhat friendly correspondent with Luther before becoming increasingly critical of him—used Karlstadt as a substitute for the man who had accepted his invitation to debate, going back and forth on the question of free will.
Luther’s Declaration of Independence From Rome
The date when Luther directly took up the cudgels against Eck is resonant: July 4. Despite the contention of some secularists that religion was largely missing in action in the thought of the men who led the American Revolution, the fact was that the majority of them were animated by the spirit of dissenting Protestantism.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look to a contemporary of theirs from across the Atlantic, a Member of Parliament deeply sympathetic to their aspirations but at one remove from it, a politician who, if we are to believe his later biographer, Irish historian-politician-literary gadfly Conor Cruise O’Brien, was a secret Catholic: Edmund Burke.
In his Speech on Conciliation With America, Burke tried to warn the hard-liners in His Majesty’s government and their enablers in Parliament that punitive measures to bring American colonists to heel were futile. Among the reasons for this, he observed, was the Americans’ energetic pursuit of liberty, and a principal reason for this “free spirit” was their predominant religion: “The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.”
If it is in fact the case that Burke held practiced Catholicism covertly, he must have felt uncomfortable saying—just as uncomfortable as I, a cradle Catholic, am in reading—the following: “Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of support from authority.”
Lest his audience grow too self-satisfied, Burke immediately admonished that the Church of English also “was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government.” In contrast, what had taken root in America was “a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”
Luther would have understood the spirit of “natural liberty” from which American liberty sprang, as well as the principle of dissent that acted like fission in threatening to split apart the young nation. By calling for an interpretation of Scripture by individual believers, he introduced a spirit of individualism into Christianity, undermining not only the authority of the Pope to rule on policy but of the scholastic elites that had sprung up in universities.
At the same time, individualism also threatened to undermine the unity of anti-Roman forces in Christianity. Dissenters not only could pull away from the Church but from any institution formed against it. In other words, let a thousand sects bloom.
I’m not sure that Luther ever understood this implication of his defiance. But that’s often how it goes with revolutionaries, isn’t it? They take one half-step toward disagreement until, through a combination of their own personalities and ideological environments they never expected to find, they come to a place they could never imagine.
(We’re seeing something like this in the Iranian Revolution now, where the opposition leadership might have begun with few differences with the country’s theocracy on the nature of Islam and the state but now find themselves far removed from where they started.)
Leipzig as the Site of the Disputation
Speaking of places, how did Luther and Eck find themselves at Leipzig in the first place? Luther undoubtedly would have preferred Wittenberg in northern Germany, which not only had demonstrated receptiveness to his quarrel with the Vatican but also, in the form of Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, would have meant protection in case his life were threatened.
Leipzig, on the other hand, was more congenial for Eck. It was under the jurisdiction of Duke George, Frederick’s cousin, who loathed Luther. Even the university of Leipzig was not congenial territory for Luther—the faculty didn’t like him much.
According to Richard Marius’ biography Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (1999), Luther had agreed not to speak during the debate between Eck and Karlstadt, on one condition: if he himself weren’t attacked. Duke George agreed to the proviso, probably wanting for the university the distinction of having put this troublesome priest in his place.
The pageantry and procession involved with the three-week “Leipzig Disputation” involving Eck, Karlstadt and Luther were enormous. I’m not sure Marius exaggerates all that much in claiming that it was accompanied by “the zest and ceremony that might attend an intercollegiate game in America today.” They certainly hearkened back to the spirit of ancient gladiatorial contests, with the following characteristics:
* Eck came into the city several days before, accompanied by a youth who would write an account of the proceedings, and feted along with the way with numerous honors.
Such was not the case with the theological thrust-and-parry that began on this date in Leipzig, Germany, between Catholic theologian Johann Eck and his opponent, a monk whose arguments with the Church had grown more pointed over the last couple of years: Martin Luther.
The quest for American freedom neither began nor ended with July 4, 1776. In my post later today, I’ll take up the issue of how the banner of liberty was raised well after the Declaration of Independence, in an era of complacency.
For now, though, I thought it would be useful to examine an event that is not only little remembered among chroniclers of American freedom, but that does not even receive as much attention as it should where you think it might: in histories of Europe.
The Folly of Teaching European History
Everybody knows that the teaching of American history at the elementary and high school level is ridiculous. To cover two centuries (even more, if you count from the Columbia encounter with the New World) in two years was silly when I was going to school more than 30 years ago—the more contemporary period inevitably got short shrift. It’s even worse now with an added generation and a half to account for.
Okay, now imagine European history. Only Mel Brooks or Monty Python could cover the high (or make that low) points of nearly a millennium of events. Even chopping it up in smaller periods—say, the Renaissance and Reformation—only gets you so far.
That’s what I found out in reviewing my college notes, from a class I took at Columbia University, on this period. (I’m far from knocking the course, by the way: it remains one of the most fondly recalled that I had in college.)
But for all the talk in class about the causes and consequences of the Reformation, even of the biases involved with the term (coined, of course, by Protestants, and grumbled at by Catholics for years), I found no mention in the notes of this landmark event in Luther’s movement away from the Church.
Point of No Return
Until this point, despite nailing his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg (it probably didn’t happen quite this way, but that’s a story for another time), Luther had been careful mostly to confine himself to abuses loudly denounced even by mainstream defenders of Catholicism. As he defended himself against Eck, however, Luther was forced to depart ever more seriously, on a wider range of substantive issues, than before.
In other words, this was Luther’s point of no return, after which he and the Church were doomed irretrievably for conflict.
Although Eck began speaking against an opponent on June 27, it wasn’t against Luther himself at first but against his friend Andreas Karlstadt. For a week, Eck—who had started out as a somewhat friendly correspondent with Luther before becoming increasingly critical of him—used Karlstadt as a substitute for the man who had accepted his invitation to debate, going back and forth on the question of free will.
Luther’s Declaration of Independence From Rome
The date when Luther directly took up the cudgels against Eck is resonant: July 4. Despite the contention of some secularists that religion was largely missing in action in the thought of the men who led the American Revolution, the fact was that the majority of them were animated by the spirit of dissenting Protestantism.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look to a contemporary of theirs from across the Atlantic, a Member of Parliament deeply sympathetic to their aspirations but at one remove from it, a politician who, if we are to believe his later biographer, Irish historian-politician-literary gadfly Conor Cruise O’Brien, was a secret Catholic: Edmund Burke.
In his Speech on Conciliation With America, Burke tried to warn the hard-liners in His Majesty’s government and their enablers in Parliament that punitive measures to bring American colonists to heel were futile. Among the reasons for this, he observed, was the Americans’ energetic pursuit of liberty, and a principal reason for this “free spirit” was their predominant religion: “The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.”
If it is in fact the case that Burke held practiced Catholicism covertly, he must have felt uncomfortable saying—just as uncomfortable as I, a cradle Catholic, am in reading—the following: “Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of support from authority.”
Lest his audience grow too self-satisfied, Burke immediately admonished that the Church of English also “was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government.” In contrast, what had taken root in America was “a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”
Luther would have understood the spirit of “natural liberty” from which American liberty sprang, as well as the principle of dissent that acted like fission in threatening to split apart the young nation. By calling for an interpretation of Scripture by individual believers, he introduced a spirit of individualism into Christianity, undermining not only the authority of the Pope to rule on policy but of the scholastic elites that had sprung up in universities.
At the same time, individualism also threatened to undermine the unity of anti-Roman forces in Christianity. Dissenters not only could pull away from the Church but from any institution formed against it. In other words, let a thousand sects bloom.
I’m not sure that Luther ever understood this implication of his defiance. But that’s often how it goes with revolutionaries, isn’t it? They take one half-step toward disagreement until, through a combination of their own personalities and ideological environments they never expected to find, they come to a place they could never imagine.
(We’re seeing something like this in the Iranian Revolution now, where the opposition leadership might have begun with few differences with the country’s theocracy on the nature of Islam and the state but now find themselves far removed from where they started.)
Leipzig as the Site of the Disputation
Speaking of places, how did Luther and Eck find themselves at Leipzig in the first place? Luther undoubtedly would have preferred Wittenberg in northern Germany, which not only had demonstrated receptiveness to his quarrel with the Vatican but also, in the form of Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, would have meant protection in case his life were threatened.
Leipzig, on the other hand, was more congenial for Eck. It was under the jurisdiction of Duke George, Frederick’s cousin, who loathed Luther. Even the university of Leipzig was not congenial territory for Luther—the faculty didn’t like him much.
According to Richard Marius’ biography Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (1999), Luther had agreed not to speak during the debate between Eck and Karlstadt, on one condition: if he himself weren’t attacked. Duke George agreed to the proviso, probably wanting for the university the distinction of having put this troublesome priest in his place.
The pageantry and procession involved with the three-week “Leipzig Disputation” involving Eck, Karlstadt and Luther were enormous. I’m not sure Marius exaggerates all that much in claiming that it was accompanied by “the zest and ceremony that might attend an intercollegiate game in America today.” They certainly hearkened back to the spirit of ancient gladiatorial contests, with the following characteristics:
* Eck came into the city several days before, accompanied by a youth who would write an account of the proceedings, and feted along with the way with numerous honors.
* A couple of days later, Luther and his party came in on a carriage and various chariots.
* The disputation began with a mass at St. Thomas Church (later the work- and burial place of composer Johann Sebastian Bach), which was followed by a long procession that included abbots, counts, knights, and academics, then giving way to the singing of a church hymn in the great hall of Pleissenburg Castle.
* The castle was specially outfitted by Duke George for the occasion, with spectators sitting on benches hung with tapestry and the two intellectual combatants standing at opposite pulpits.
Luther’s pulpit stood under the portrait of St. Martin, Eck’s under the portrait of St. George.
When Eck, true to his instincts, went after Luther, the gloves came off.
Spiritual and Intellectual Heat
The air might have been still cool at 7 am on July 4, when the monks and university community gathered to watch Eck and Luther take their positions in their pulpits. But before long, they’d be witnesses to intellectual heat and fireworks.
Eck now disliked Luther, who returned the feeling, and then some (“a glory-hungry little beast,” Luther wrote of his opponent, in one of those bursts of invective that make for lively reading if not Christian charity.)
In physical appearance and style of disputation, Eck and Luther were near-polar opposites.
Eck, at least according to the description provided by Leipzig professor Peter Mosellan, was broad-shouldered, with “a strong German voice, fit for the stage—fit for a public crier.” His manner sounds common, even coarse: “His mouth, eyes and countenance gave the impression of his being a soldier or a butcher, rather than a divine.”
That plebeian appearance (like Luther, Eck sprang from peasant stock) concealed a scholar with a phenomenal memory and an ability to lure opponents onto extremely dangerous ground.
Portraits painted of Luther later in life left me unprepared for the figure conjured up by Mosellan, one who held a nosegay while in his pulpit and possessed of “a body so wasted with cares and study that you can almost count his bones.” In contrast to the guttural tones of Eck, Luther had “a clear and penetrating voice.” Rather than Eck’s source of authority--the pope and the entire line of Fathers of the Church--Luther had become increasingly wedded to sola scriptura, or reliance on scripture alone.
Thick slugger versus lean counterpuncher, Douglas vs. Lincoln: it’s easy to see the role Luther assumes.
The debate between Luther and Eck began on July 4th and ended on the 8th. The ground they covered included the papal authority, church infallibility, purgatory, the sale of indulgences, and penance.
Despite forensic rules designed to ensure courtesy, the two debaters continually irritated each other. Eck became annoyed with Luther for stopping to read notes passed along in mid-debate by good friend Philip Melanchthon, mostly citing biblical passages that contradicted Eck’s appeal to papal authority.
For his part, Eck sought to live up to the Germanic origin of his surname—“corner”—by placing Luther in a theological tight spot. The monk’s debating style, which could turn sarcastic when challenged (an intemperance that led pacifistic humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam to fear Luther would spark division and violence within Christendom), provided numerous opportunities for Eck to trap him.
In one such moment, Eck accused Luther of espousing doctrines on salvation and papal authority that were associated with John Wycliffe and John Hus, both denounced as heretics by the Church.
If Luther’s Adam’s apple didn’t throb when he heard the last name, he had the sang froid of a cat burglar. To counter critics of his positions, Hus had come to a debate, just as Luther had now, only to be seized by authorities and executed.
During a lunch break, Luther slipped into the library and found that in fact Eck was right: He did agree with Hus. When they returned to the forum, the monk admitted it.
Luther’s admission provided Eck with the goal he had in mind for the debate. In relatively short order, he obtained from the Vatican a papal bull excommunicating Luther. This time, however, Luther would not follow the path to martyrdom followed by Hus.
The Protestant and American Revolutions Compared
The rebellious monk was able to make his stand—to achieve independence, if you will—in ways followed by the American colonists 250 years later:
* Exploiting the power of print—Unlike Hus, Luther could resort to a revolutionary invention—the printing press—that disseminated his ideas throughout Germany in no time. American colonists carried this even further in the form of newspapers that attacked British abuses.
* Using the power of his pen—Luther’s translation of the Bible into German fed the development of that language, and his works—not just sermons and polemical statements but hymns—powerfully propagated his message. The American revolutionaries had several powerful penmen—the two Thomases (Jefferson and Paine) and even a conservative, John Dickinson (who, before he abstained from signing the Declaration, was continually called on by the Continental Congress to write many of its most important statements).
* Alliances with powerful forces—Luther was lucky enough to fall under the protection of Frederick the Wise, who, though he remained at least nominally a Catholic, felt that Luther had committed no religious crime that required Church intervention. The colonists were able to call on France and Spain as allies after the Battle of Saratoga convinced those countries that the Americans had a fighting chance—and that King George’s military could be bled dry in a foreign war.
Luther was, as a PBS documentary put it, a “Reluctant Revolutionary,” and in certain ways he staked out positions that were antithetical to the stance of individual freedom that he advocated. His furious denunciation of the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1524, for instance, let down a group inspired by his ideas. Even more dismaying, he made his last journey—one on which he took ill and died—in order to denounce Jews.
The revolution Luther created became a mighty river in European intellectual and political developments. One of its important tributaries flowed through Philadelphia in 1776.
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